Google Adsense team makes mistakes too

What do you do if you received an email from Google Adsense telling you that your site violated Adsense policies and that your account may be disabled in the future?

That’s exactly the email I got from them last week so you can imagine my panic at the thought of losing an income source.

Adsense’s email states:

From: adsense-support@google.com
To: futuregizmo@gmail.com
Date: Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 10:52 AM
Subject: Google AdSense

Hello,

.

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as http://www.pinoymoneytalk.com/2008/06/11/increasing-google-adsense-income/.

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Publishers are not permitted to encourage users to click on Google ads or bring excessive attention to ad units. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click the ads,” “support our sponsors,” “visit these recommended links,” or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. Publishers may not use arrows or other symbols to direct attention to the ads on their sites, and publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements.”

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Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 3 business days. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

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Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

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Thank you for your cooperation.

I know I’m still in a better position because other pubishers’ Adsense accounts are automatically disabled after just the first violation. I’m thankful the Google Adsense team contacted me first regarding a possible TOS violation.

The problem, though, is that I don’t know of any policy violation my site committed, especially in the specific page the email pointed out.

As a response, I emailed them the following:

Hi, thank you for sending me this email reminder. It would have been of great help, though, if you can clearly identify the supposed violation my site has committed.

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I checked your Adsense policies and I think I am not in violation of any policy. Please let me know if there are things, if any, that need to be rectified.

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Thank you very much.

A few hours ago, the team emailed back. Here’s their reply that made me breathe a sigh of relief.

From: adsense-support@google.com
To: futuregizmo@gmail.com
Date: Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 2:42 AM
Subject Re: Google AdSense

Hello James,

.

Thanks for following up with us. Our AdSense representatives monitor all sites participating in Google’s AdSense program according to our Terms and Conditions and program policies. It appears that we sent the prior warning message in error. I apologize for the confusion.

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Thank you for your understanding.

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Sincerely,

.

Sarah
The Google AdSense Team

Apparently, the Adsense team commits mistakes sometimes when issuing warnings on websites that supposedly violate their policies. As for me, I’m just glad this was all “in error.”

Apology accepted, Google Adsense. 🙂